


demons love uncovers

by hedgebitch



Series: a savior's a nuisance to live with at home [2]
Category: DC Extended Universe, Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:49:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22202128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hedgebitch/pseuds/hedgebitch
Summary: An exploration of Dick Grayson in a world without Nightwing—largely through his relationship history. Can be read as a standalone.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Shawn Tsang (mention), Stephanie Brown & Dick Grayson
Series: a savior's a nuisance to live with at home [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1562239
Comments: 6
Kudos: 36





	demons love uncovers

**Author's Note:**

> in the snyderverse (ignoring certain post movie comments) dick gave up robin without ever meeting clark—so instead of nightwing he becomes renegade, who’s pretty much doomed from the start. think of this as an au of an au: i pulled from comics to create the grimdark-iest, most dceu adjacent narrative i could, and then i said fuck it and sent dick the fuck to therapy. for the most part though i think a world with batfleck is a world with a pretty unhappy batfam.
> 
> content warnings: brief mentions of alcohol abuse and an abandoned suicide attempt, more explicit mentions of rape and domestic violence but nothing actively shown, a maybe unrealistic portrayal of therapy, a Very brief moment of ableism
> 
> title from my man by valley queen

People tend to forget that Dick was raised by a happily married couple. Tabloids rave about him following in Bruce’s less-than-monogamous footsteps from the moment he turns 18 and Bruce has to stop threatening lawsuits. Every girl he’s seen with is a fling, a lover, a side-piece, a thousand other horrifically misogynistic dismissals. 

And, sure. The rumours about the Argentinian model aren’t completely unsubstantiated, and he definitely didn’t _not_ hook up with that actress he met in Switzerland a couple years ago, but…well, the whole thing’s just a lot more complex than Vicki Vale would like the world to believe. After all, “Wayne’s Ward Confesses: He’s Been In Love With The Same Girl Since He Was Thirteen, But He Fucked It Up And Now He’s Going To Die Alone” doesn’t sound like it would sell quite as many papers. 

He tells his therapist—the one Leslie bullied him into seeing, got Alfred to get her bat-approved and everything, not the one the Department referred him to after… _after_ —as much, and she takes a deep breath in like the mere thought of dissecting the process that brought him to that conclusion is physically painful.

“There’s a lot to unpack there,” she tells him. “But let’s start with the word ‘alone.’”

She’s got a point.

Dick doesn’t really let himself be alone.

Like, ever.

“I’ve been alone,” he insists, anyway, and then starts scrambling through memories to see if it’s true.

Starting point: high school. Even when he’d been bugging Babs about his puppy crush on her, he hadn’t exactly been distant with the girls at school. He’d had dates to every dance—well, excluding the ones he ditched in favour of going out dressed in a rather different style of suit—and a handful of girlfriends, for sure. 

And then he’d graduated, tried GU for a semester—hadn’t worked out, and neither had things with Sonia, but he met Cheyenne at that gala and she’d stuck around for longer than anyone thought she would. 

He’d started at the GCPD after that…and then Haly’s had come to town, and he’d spent a few months going back and forth with Raya. And then all that shit with Emily went down, which technically didn’t count because it had been an investigation, except. Well, by the end of things, it definitely counted. 

And then he’d gone to Switzerland for New Year’s, and a few months later Vicki Vale announced to the world that the actress had cheated on him with the model, while, outside of Gotham, gossip rags swore up and down that _he_ had cheated on the _actress_ with the model (although the most accurate summary of that period in his life would have to include the model, the actress, and the model’s ex-girlfriend.)

Of course, then the photos had leaked, and Dick had prioritized damage control over anyone’s feelings, so he’d ended up alone for…well, it was really only a month he’d been alone for before Cat showed up. Vicki had _loved_ Cat, for some reason, even if they were never really a thing. Except, well. At the end of the day, Cat had thought they were, which was proof enough that maybe they had been, all along.

And then he had been alone. _Really_ alone. And it had been bad— _really_ bad. And then Babs had intervened, and things got better, and then they’d started dating, and things had almost even been okay again, and then Jason fucking died and everything went to hell.

He knows Bruce never realized, so he’s pretty sure Babs never caught on either—to just how poorly he’d been coping, even before that December. Even before Joker shot Babs, even before Dick resigned from the Blüdhaven Police Department. Hell, he’d moved to Blüdhaven in August to keep them from figuring out how barely held together he was, and it had almost even worked. Would have, if Joker hadn’t escaped Arkham, if Dick hadn’t beaten the bastard til his heart stopped beating, not as Robin, not as Renegade, not even as a detective, but in civilian clothes—as Richard John Grayson.

GCPD managed to resuscitate on-site, and no one bothered to even bring Dick in for questioning. 

“You saw what he did to the Commissioner’s daughter,” he’d heard one officer say to another, and felt his blood boil. “If someone pulled that shit with Sandy, just showed up at our house and crippled her, I’d kill the fucker, too.”

So Dick had gotten a hotel instead of going home to Blüdhaven. Showered, slept, and in the morning resolved to never leave himself alone like that, not again. He’d gone to the Clocktower to apologize to Babs, apologize for forcing her to call EMTs on the man who’d tried to kill her, but he found himself proposing instead.

That had lasted all of a month. Vicki Vale was merciless when photos surfaced of him sitting across the table from a well-dressed woman at one of Blüdhaven’s fancier casinos, within two weeks of Barbara getting spotted in public without a ring. Nevermind the fact that it had been a job interview.

He had gotten involved with someone at his gym within the month, so maybe Vicki had been on to something. Not that any of the tabloids picked up on the fact that “Richie Grayson’s Exotic Post-Engagement Wingman” had ever been anything more than that. 

After that there hadn’t been any person in specific, but definitely a few too many individual people, and then the can of worms that was February had opened and “I got fucked up and almost jumped off a bridge,” doesn’t strike him as a revelation that Angie will let slide.

And then he’d started working—well, volunteering—at the community center, and he’d run into the strangest of old acquaintances. He’d wanted to be friends with Shawn. Nothing more. But after a while, friendship wasn’t enough to hold back the crushing loneliness, and they’d made a mutually shitty decision to let things go further than they should have.

And that’s the latest update in his mental file of “people I’ve wronged,” making the end of his answer to Angie…

“For a little while, at least.”

It’s his (insurance company’s) money. He can waste it via omission if he wants to.

Angie doesn’t look too pleased about it, though, so he searches for something worthwhile to offer her in the minute left of their session.

“I had a very rough year when my dog died?”

“Get out of my office, Grayson.”

•••

Angie Reissman glances at the clock on her computer as she sorts through her drawer of papers, searching for her next patient’s file.

One of her morning appointments went fifteen minutes over, and it’s offset her whole schedule all day—it’s already a minute past the current appointment time. Dick prefers not to sit in the waiting room, though, and tends to be a couple minutes late every session as a result—meaning she’s got time to actually look at her notes from their last session.

She doesn’t really need to see the notes to remember, of course. She paid a lot of money to earn a degree declaring her a professional, and she’s not going to throw that out the window anytime soon just because her patient used to wear brightly coloured spandex—but that doesn’t make it any less meaningful that she’s treating the man that used to be Robin.

Besides. Their last session wasn’t exactly productive enough to warrant much in the way of notes. There are a few things he mentioned worth keeping in mind, of course, but underlined and circled, at the bottom of the page, is just the word “why?”

There’s a knock on the doorframe—the door itself is cracked open—from the receptionist as they deliver Dick to her door. 

“Thank you, Eva,” she calls out after them as they turn away, then greets Dick. 

“Hiya, Angie!” he responds, cheerful as ever as he takes a seat in the chair across from hers.

“You cancelled our last session pretty last minute—nothing too bad happened, I hope?”

“Nah,” Dick says, then makes a face. “Well, I mean…not…inherently bad?”

She’d been expecting a half-assed excuse—the fact that he’s bothering to reconsider his instinct to minimize means whatever happened must have hit him hard.

“Care to elaborate any? I can guess, but we might be here a while.”

“Yeah, sorry. It’s just…been a long month,” he says, sounding like he means it. “So, uh, our appointment was scheduled at 5, only, Shawn called me around 4 asking if I could drop by hers on my way home with a pregnancy test, so…I did that instead. And, uh. Well, if the result had been the easy one, I’d’ve probably found time to reschedule, so.”

Okay, Angie tells herself. Tabling the “why” discussion for a future session, then.

“Have you decided what you’re going to do?”

“Shawn is still…making up her mind,” Dick replies, in that way that means his is already decided.

“What would you like her to choose?”

“I don’t want her to choose because of me,” Dick says softly, selfless to a fault.

“She’s not here—she can’t hear you,” Angie reminds him. “Just tell me: if it were only up to you, what would you decide?”

Dick takes a moment to ponder. Angie likes that about him, she thinks—that he always seems to think about each question she asks him, even the ones he doesn’t answer.

“I don’t—I mean—I guess…I know I’m not ready to be a father, but neither was Bruce. Neither was my father, I don’t think. And I remember, with Emily, helping with Dennis, even if it wasn’t real—I guess I just think not being ready wouldn’t make me any worse at it.”

Emily. Always just “Emily.” He’d referred to her as his ex-wife once, then only ever Emily from there on out. He’d jokingly referred to “the ex” once, and Angie had been surprised to learn he meant Barbara rather than Emily. 

“I think you’re onto something there—but tell me. Why don’t you consider how you felt towards Emily and her son real?”

“I mean, I told you—the whole relationship with her, it was all just part of an investigation, and—”

“Hang on, I’m gonna stop you there so I can ask a question. Did you or did you not tell me that you considered yourself in love with her, that you were heartbroken when she decided to end your relationship, that you felt responsible for making sure Dennis could still contact you after the fact?”

“…I did.”

“And were you telling me the truth?”

“…yes.”

He looks like he’s figured out what she’s getting at, and normally she’d take a moment to drive the point further, but…it’s just too close a topic to what she’d been planning on touching on to avoid the slight subject change.

“Dick, are you aware of how frequently you say things like that?”

“Things like what?”

“You devalue your emotional reactions and experiences.”

“Oh,” he says, and starts fiddling with the sleeves of his shirt. “Yeah, I guess.”

Angie doesn’t usually find herself having to try so hard to resist the urge to show irritation—at least, not with any of the other patients she’s seen over the years.

“Yeah, you guess you’re aware of the behavioral pattern, or yeah, you guess it’s what you just did?”

“I just…prefer objective truths,” he tells her, and she almost wants to smack him over the head with his own rolled up file, shouting “your emotions _are_ objective truths” until the message finally sinks in.

Except she does not want to do that at all. Because that would be unprofessional. And probably ineffective, considering all the head trauma he’s bound to have had inflicted on him over the years.

Instead she settles for asking the question she set out to ask after the end of their last session.

“Why do you come back here every month, Dick, if you’re so invested in dismissing your emotions? At our first session, you told me your goal was to stop bottling everything up, so I’m asking you this because—if that’s still the case—we’re going to need to try either a different approach or a different goal.”

Dick looks a bit like a child who’s just gotten told off, which checks out, considering how everything Angie knows about him points right to him being the sort of person to believe you can fail at therapy.

“I don’t know,” he starts, then seems to realize he actually does know. “I mean…I guess. I guess it’s that…the problem isn’t really the way I feel, but more so what I do with those feelings.”

“You feel like you’re resorting to unhealthy coping mechanisms?”

“I, uh. I know I am,” he mutters. 

“Okay,” Angie tells him. “We can work on that. We’ve got…looks like about twenty minutes left today. Do you want to tell me a little more about what you mean when you say you know you’re using unhealthy coping mechanisms?” 

Dick hesitates before he answers, and the conversation that follows doesn’t feel any less like pulling teeth—but it does feel like progress. He tells her about quitting—quitting Renegade as well as the police force—about his brother, about Barbara, all things he’d skirted around but never really addressed. He tells her about things she hadn’t picked up on, too: about how the closest thing to booze he can keep in his apartment is rubbing alcohol, about how he’d only stopped going out in costume when he realized he didn’t care if he came back, about how in his dreams he hears the people he loves screaming for help.

She sends him home with resources on addiction—she highly doubts he’ll use anything they offer, but it seems like the problem he best knows how to address, and at the very least will give him terms and strategies to research.

They end up going a few minutes over, but he’s her last appointment of the day—so once Eva’s shown Dick out, she shoots a text off to Micha to tell the kids she’ll be home soon, and starts looking back over her notes.

She’d talked to Dick about his turbulent relationship history—well, not in their very first session, which had focused largely on his history as Robin, on how Robin became Renegade, and on why, almost a year after beating a man to death, he’d finally listened to Dr. Thompkins and decided to seek out counselling. But certainly in their second session, when she’d asked more questions about his engagement, and he’d instinctively asked her “Which one?”

Dick had expressed concern that he’d been in more relationships than was normal for his age, but he’d only mentioned a few specific people. Her notes have these people classified: Liu (the highschool sweetheart), Raya (the childhood friend), Emily (the unofficial ex-wife), Barbara (the official ex-best friend), and Shawn (the current girlfriend). 

Today, he’d mentioned more. Enough to cover most of his life, actually, except for the year between the scandal involving a male model and an actress Angie thinks she can remember seeing in a Bond movie, and the start of his relationship with Barbara.

It’s entirely possible that year is what he’d been referring to when he’d said two months ago that he’d been alone “for a little while.”

But—having known Dick even only through their monthly meetings—it seems much more likely to Angie that, like with the drinking and the recklessness, whatever happened involved something he’s too ashamed of to bring up.

Their September meeting yields less progress than Angie would have liked. She dedicates a little too much time to letting Dick try to figure out if Shawn breaking up with him because she hadn’t realized when he offered to marry her that he was still in love with Barbara counts as another broken off engagement or not.

(“I’ll leave it up to Vicki,” he decides with a shrug, and Angie takes that as her cue to ask about how he uses humour to detach himself from situations.)

The biggest thing they need to cover is that Dick had met Shawn—well, reconnected with her—through the support groups for ex-masks Shawn ran out of the local community center. He’d gotten a job through a friend of hers that frequented those meetings. In short, his support system is filled with Shawn’s friends. They talk about options to make sure he doesn’t end up on his own; which is to say they talk about Bruce.

Dick also mentions before their time runs out that he’s got an ex in town, someone who texted this morning and asked if he wanted to meet up for dinner or drinks.

“I should definitely not text back,” he says.

He sounds like he means it, too, so Angie dutifully tells him, “You should definitely not text back.”

Eva must have had to double-check something with his insurance card or in his patient file after their session, because before Angie finishes up with her notes, she heads across the office to grab a cup of shitty coffee, and Dick cheerfully waves at her from a seat in the otherwise empty reception area.

“I texted back!” he announces. 

When Dick walks back into her office in November, he’s got a fading black eye and old bruises poking out from beneath his shirtsleeves. 

“Bar fight?” she asks.

“Something like that,” Dick agrees, but the blatancy of his evasiveness says more than enough.

“More information, please,” Angie requests.

“Can I assume that _you_ assumed from context clues that I went out with my ex after last month’s meeting?” Dick asks, and Angie feels her blood freeze in her veins.

“It wasn’t—it didn’t happen like that,” he quickly assures her. “There was—Jesus fuck, I have no idea how to explain this—at least one secret society involved?”

Angie has to unclench her teeth before she can ask for further information.

“Were you invited out on a date, or on a mission involving a secret society?”

“On a date?”

“Who physically was responsible for hurting you? Your date or someone else?”

“Technically his boss?”

“Was he—were you being _targeted_ by the secret society in question?”

“Just for intel.”

Dick is staring at her in confusion like the sheer possibility that he was a victim of whatever happened has never even crossed his mind—which is exactly when Angie realizes that’s because it _hasn’t_.

“Dick. You’re a civilian, and someone you were romantically interested in intentionally put you in harm’s way, under false pretences, without your knowledge, and without your consent. What does that sound like to you?”

“Like Tuesday,” Dick jokes, and Angie does her best to look unimpressed.

“Look, it’s done with. He’s not coming back, and if he does, well, he can’t use the secret society surprise attack twice,” Dick says, as if that helps anything.

Angie gives up and does her best to continue their session as usual. Before she sends him off, though, she hunts down a spare notepad and quickly copies down some information from the pamphlet she usually hands off to people interested in support groups for victims of domestic violence.

“I know you said you’re out of the situation,” she placates him before handing it over. “But I think you could learn a lot more about yourself, even if you go just to listen. I can see the gears turning in your head right now, trying to find an excuse to get out of it. This is a list of meeting times that generally have high enough attendance that you can get away without speaking, but low enough that I don't think you’ll be overwhelmed. None of the groups are women-only, and they all have non-disclosure policies.”

•••

Dick ends up going. He doesn’t speak; just listens. And he ends up learning something after all, ends up learning something unexpected. 

There’s a young girl at the meeting—too young, really. Looks about the age Jason would be, Dick can’t help but think—talking about. About. About how she’d said no. But she hadn’t tried to stop him. When she breaks down, the woman sitting next to her—mid to late forties, had mentioned an ex-wife with a drug addiction earlier in the meeting—steps in to comfort her. 

“It’s alright,” she says gently, then firms up. “Saying no is enough. Saying no _should_ have been enough.”

The words set off some hidden feeling of—of revulsion, or maybe horror—inside Dick, so intense that he doesn’t realize he’s zoned out until the hour is up, at which point he promptly excuses himself to the nearest restroom with all intentions of splashing some water on his face and giving himself a stern talking to in the mirror, only to find himself dry-heaving on the bathroom floor. His only solace is that the bathrooms are gendered, and he was, in fact, the only man at the meeting—and that solace turns out to be temporary when he hears a knock against the doorframe and a soft voice asking “you okay in there?”

It’s the girl—the young one. He starts to tell her he’s fine, and gets as far as “No, I—” before another wave of nausea hits.

“Yeah, best to end it at ‘no’ and quit while you’re ahead,” she says, cheerfully striding into the men’s bathroom and joining him on the floor—much happier and much more confident than she’d seemed not twenty minutes ago, but, well. Who’s Dick to talk? His brain is begging him to say something, anything to make a joke: maybe even just “mi casa es su casa” but his body is still a little roll-y, so he settles for a disappointed look.

“If you’re trying to guilt me into leaving you alone by looking pitiful, I'll have you know, many have tried and it’s never worked before.”

Nervousness crawls back into her voice as she switches tracks after her joke. “But like, for real, I’ll leave you alone if you want me to, I just. You looked kinda upset after I shared and I don't think we’re really supposed to be saying stuff specific enough to be triggering, so I just wanted to like. Apologize. And obviously you _are_ upset, so maybe I was right. Or maybe this has nothing to do with me and I’m being a huge jerk but. You’re clearly not doing too hot so I'm not leaving unless you ask me to.”

“Your ultimatums could do with some refinement,” Dick manages.

She has the nerve to stick her tongue out at him, and for an instant when she speaks, Dick is so intensely reminded of Jason that it hurts. 

“Ah, yes, the pinnacle of refinement—the floor of the men’s bathroom in a one room Methodist church.”

It clicks suddenly that Jason’s thick accent isn’t just superimposed over her voice in his head—it’s part of it. 

“You’re from Gotham?” he asks, because what he really wants to say is “I miss you.”

“Born and raised!” the girl announces. “Moved out here the second I turned eighteen.”

“And when was that? Tomorrow?”

She somehow manages to roll her eyes and blush at the same time. “Last month,” she admits. “It was…a bit of an impulse decision, actually. Got tired of—of living on Cluemaster’s old turf.”

“Cluemaster?” Dick asks. “Hasn’t he been irrelevant since that purple mask took him out a few years back?”

She’d gone by the name of Spoiler, he remembers. Technically, Batman had helped solve the case, but he’d convinced her it was a fair trade for her to get the credit if she agreed to never put her costume back on again.

“You a Gothamite, too?” she asks in surprise, and Dick makes a mental note of the subject change. “You don’t sound it.”

“English is my third language,” he tells her. “I learned well enough from TV to fake a native accent, but never quite got around to acing the local dialect.” 

It’s as close to the truth as he can get without having to explain Bruce’s rigorous enforcement of Dick practicing as many different accents as possible, with varying degrees of success.

“Really? Where are you from?” she asks, and it’s an innocent enough question, but now Dick has to decide. If he tells her the truth—she’ll know who he is, for sure. He could lie—but he’d never be able to come back here.

“France,” he tells her, opting for the truth, for once. “Well, sort of. I was born in Paris—my mom’s hometown—but we travelled all around the world. I moved to Gotham when I was eight.”

The girl nods thoughtfully—then freezes. She looks him over closely, and Dick has to try hard to resist the urge to turn his head away under her scrutiny.

“Huh,” she finally says. “I guess _everyone_ looks human when they’re throwing up their guts in a public bathroom.”

“The great universal unifier,” Dick remarks.

“Well,” she decides. “It’s nice to meet you. Sorry about whatever shit relationship brought you here. My name’s Stephanie Brown, I’ve been your nuisance tonight, and I'll be here all year.”

“Lovely to meet you, awful decor,” Dick agrees. “Really, I'd just say ditto but I might be moving back home soon.”

“Really? _Back_ to Gotham?”

Dick weighs his options. The fact that Vicki Vale doesn’t already know is a miracle in and of itself. Ultimately, he trusts Stephanie, so he goes with his gut.

“Just briefly,” he assures her. “Long enough for my pregnant ex girlfriend to become significantly less pregnant at a Wayne-funded hospital, and for friends, family, and uninvited members of the press to get a sufficient number of photos.”

Her eyes widen comically, but by the time she gets her mouth open to speak, they’re interrupted by a ding from her phone. It’s a rideshare app—announcing that her driver cancelled.

“Ruh roh,” Steph stage whispers. “Forgot about that.”

Dick closes his eyes and prays to god he won’t regret this. “I can give you a ride.”

“Really?” her eyes brighten. “Thank you thank you thank you!”

**Author's Note:**

> if i’ve missed a relationship you’re fond of, honestly there’s still enough gaps in this that maybe dick just forgot. i know there’s Discourse in fandom over how to portray dick in relationships but i hope this did a good job of reflecting my own headcanons which are largely that he conflates intimacy with sex and seeks out love instead of actually addressing his loneliness. 
> 
> imaginary dceu steph has had a shit deal in this but like. i’ve got a good 6k written that i think’ll do her justice. bug me on tumblr @[nightflings](http://nightflings.tumblr.com/) if you want me to actually finish it


End file.
